Supporters of Liz Cheney are dismissing the concerns of critics on both the left and the right who have accused her new organization of leveling an out-of-bounds attack on Barack Obama’s Justice Department.

Keep America Safe, the new group founded by Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, and other prominent conservatives, has gone after current Justice Department lawyers who before joining the administration had defended suspected terrorists being held at Guantanamo Bay. The group calls those lawyers the “al Qaeda 7” in a web video released earlier this month calling on Justice to release their names.

The department did release the lawyers’ names, but in the days since Cheney has come under fire from Republicans, including veterans of the Bush-Cheney administration, denouncing the ad.

Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, appointed by President George W. Bush, called the ad “shoddy and dangerous” in a column in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, arguing that the integrity of our justice system depends on “lawyers who took legal positions or represented clients that were or became unpopular.” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) criticized the ad Tuesday and numerous leading conservative legal scholars have come forward to criticize the ad.

Former Independent Counsel Ken Starr, a former appellate judge who led the investigation into the affair of President Bill Clinton, called Cheney’s attack “out of bounds,” during an interview on MSNBC’s “Countdown” this week.

But Cheney’s allies are suggesting that their detractors need thicker skins.

“People are awfully prissy,” former U.S. Attorney Andy McCarthy told POLITICO. “I think that they are actually more upset that the language that was used in the ad was successful in attracting more attention than there was before.”

Cheney declined to speak with POLITICO, but Keep America Safe Executive Director Aaron Harison said, “The American people have a right to know who in the Department of Justice is setting policy regarding detention of terrorists and related national security issues.”

“Did officials now appointed to make key decisions of national security previously take legal or policy positions at odds with their current responsibilities? Lawyers in private practice have the right to volunteer ‘pro bono’ to defend terrorists,” he added. “However, membership in the legal profession does not immunize a person from questions or criticism of their prior actions. The American people have the right to know if the same lawyers who have previously taken public positions at odds with U.S. policy are now in charge of that policy.”

While Keep America Safe says it is focused on whether defenders of suspected terrorists who now work for the government should be publicly identified, the group’s critics are more concerned with the tone of the debate and the decision to attack government lawyers for their legal work outside of the administration.

A letter signed by 19 Republican lawyers and policy experts on Monday scolded Cheney for her “shameful” attacks.

“We consider these attacks both unjust to the individuals in question and destructive of any attempt to build lasting mechanisms for counterterrorism adjudications,” the letter read, going on to compare the lawyers’ actions to John Adams’s defense of British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre.

McCarthy called the letter “really embarrassing” and rejected the Adams comparison as not similar to the current situation.

McCarthy went on to question the outrage over branding the lawyers as the “al Qaeda 7.”

“They get called a little name and they blow up about it? Come on,” he said. “They were called ‘al Qaeda 7.’ Mob lawyer is a common expression for mafia lawyers from the Justice Department. Even mob lawyers call themselves mob lawyers. Big deal. I think the ‘al Qaeda 7’ is something they just need to get over.”